I remember having quite a few VHS tapes from a company called “Just For Kids”, that had some of the neatest shows.
“Sherlock Hound”, “Kissyfur”, “Foofur”, “Seabert”, and quite a bit more. My siblings and I loved animals, so this got us interested right away!
I also grew up in a religious household, so Christian videos were standard for us.
Did you know that there was a bible-story-centric anime called “Superbook”? Used to watch it all the time! There was also “McGee and Me”, “Secret Adventure”, and “Adventures in Odyssey”. Used to listen to the “Adventures in Odyssey” radio show all the time!
“The Donut Man” was a Barney-esque Christian show for kids, too.
What obscure things did you watch growing up?
My dad would often record shows off TV to VHS for us, and looking back we’d end up with some pretty obscure stuff.
One cartoon that I’ve tried repeatedly to find again over the years was a kind of anthology of various Grimm’s fairy tales. The animation was sort of rotoscoped in places, and I later found out they were Soviet-era cartoons, but the art from some of the stories really stuck in my brain.
In particular there was a story about some kind of ice mountain, and I think two children had to go there for some reason and confront the kind of dour king who lived there. All I really remember is the image of the mountain itself, that was very geometric and sparkling. All I’ve ever been able to find was one of the short tales from the collection about the Fisherman and the Golden Fish. The imagery in general stuck with me:
Old Soviet cartoons are so absolutely beautiful! I really do hope you are able to find them someday.
There is a video about Soviet animation, if you haven’t seen it already!
Ah, nice, I’ll definitely check it out. I really enjoyed Hedgehog in the Fog too. The layered animation was amazing, but also the translation into english was really funny sometimes
“A fox has ensconced himself in my house!” Lol
Also, if you’re looking for beautiful old animation, there’s stuff by Lotte Reiniger that’s amazing. She would do these elaborate stop-motion paper cutout animations that were amazing. My favorite was the Adventures of Prince Achmed. It’s all public domain now too, so you can find it on youtube:
Very haunting images, have you tried tracking these cartoons down as an adult?
I have! Every now and again I’ll think of it and sit down to try and find the anthology we had. And that’s actually where I got the screenshots from. There is a copy of “The Fisherman and the Fish” story on youtube.
Unfortunately I cannot seem to find the one I really want of the ice/glass mountain (the mountain kind of looks like the image above from what I recall). I plan on looking for the VHS at my parents house and getting it digitally scanned it if it’s still in ok condition.
You definitely should digitally scan and post it somewhere! Im sure there are lots of others who would love being able to see it.